1Up - 6 females in videogames that get it right

Everything John Shepard could do, Jane could do better. Well, assuming you left the default names of each gender alone at the beginning of Mass Effect that is. Regardless your Shepard' name or sex, the results were the same: In the whirlwind tour of saving the galaxy from the return of the Geth and, later, the Reapers, developer BioWare wisely chose to empower both genders with the same abilities and choices. This decision gave players the utility to craft a Female Shepard that stood on equal ground as her male counterpart -- eventually, due to fan outcry, Female Shepard would even grace the cover of Mass Effect 3 -- creating an equal opportunity future for ship captains of all genders.

Bayonetta? lol. I'm not saying women in games can't be sexy and confident…but she fought bosses via all her hair/clothes falling off. I don't recall Dante in DMC whipping his knob out and bashing monsters with it.

As for ME, you might as well say "any game where you can construct a female protagonist". This is probably true equality, as opposed to picking out the relatively few examples of PCs who are solely female such as in BG&E.

As an oldtime feminist I always appreciated when games allow me to play a female character who have both a well developed personality and engage in a real story while skipping sexual undertones.

They just happen to be extremely few.

Here's a list I typed down before looking at the website linked. I will only list games with a female protagonist. No "I can select gender" or "I can select a female character" and I will skip most adventure games since they actually tend to have female main characters more often than male.

-- Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. - John F Kennedy
An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
The world is my country. To do good is my religion. My mind is my own church. This simple creed is all we need to enjoy peace on earth. - Thomas Paine

Jade, check.Alyx Vance, she's a sidekick. If one is going to include sidekicks all of the ones from the Resident Evil series fit well, so does Mona Sax (Max Payne) and Anya Stroud (Gears of War 2).The Boss, love her, but she's not the protagonist. If you're going to include the Boss you can as well include Shodan even if she's an AI or Alexia Ashford from Resident Evil Codename Veronica X.Female Shepard, no. No. Picking main characters gender doesn't count. If I could include such character I would pick the Vault Dweller or the Courier with ease, or even Tyris Flare.Chell, check, but I was going to exclude her from my own list since she's actually not talking and have no personality. In the end she's just a model.Bayonetta, nah

-- Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. - John F Kennedy
An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
The world is my country. To do good is my religion. My mind is my own church. This simple creed is all we need to enjoy peace on earth. - Thomas Paine

Chell!? You don't even know you're playing a woman until you find a mirror! And Bayontetta?? Seriously!?

I agree with JeremyM - putting Fem Shep in there is pretty weird. Tons of RPGs let you pick the gender. The gender choice rarely has much real affect on the game other than who you can and can't sleep with so it's kinda hard to say it's empowring to women. If you make the character one particular race, is it then empowring to that race? My "Tesslah" character is a bald, black woman - so just what is she empowering??

Cate Archer definitely needs to be on that list.

Lightning? Hmmm, she's a good female lead but that's a party based system. It doesn't take long before she's got other folks around. Luna might work for Final Fantasy X-2 but I never played it.

One thing that's bugging me even with my own list - our games are almost all very violence based. "Look girls, you can slaughter monsters just as well as the guys!" Errr, that's empowering?

Originally Posted by aries100
I expected to see the Hawke, femHawke, there as well. And yes, while a lot of rpgs let people pick their gender, they always seem to have women herores in scantily clothes. Not so in Biowares rpgs…

FemHawk isn't in the list because there wasn't a pageant held for her.

That FemShep pageant and the resulting publicity/controversy is the only reason she is in the list as opposed to many other rpg characters whose gender was chosen by the player to be female.

The whole voiced protoganist always annoyed me in Mass Effect but I could accept it since they went for a cinematic experience. Even if MaleShep constantly sounds like he either has a clothespin on his nose or has his nose stuffed up because of al the coke he's snorting. That last one might also explain why what he says often is way off from what dialogue choice I chose. It got really annoying when It bleeded into Dragon Age 2.

Then I got annoyed when Bethesda chose one particular player character (you know the Nord with horned helmet) as their 'model' for all promotions but at least he kept his goddamn mouth shut.

I guess, games are going the way of Hollywood and they think they need leading men/women to hawk their product (even in games where the entire point is to create your own).

Originally Posted by aries100
I expected to see the Hawke, femHawke, there as well. And yes, while a lot of rpgs let people pick their gender, they always seem to have women herores in scantily clothes. Not so in Biowares rpgs…

Not in my games thanks to all the lovely nude/armor/ and cosmetic mods. I can always count on mods to make every women a wet dream wearing chain mail.

(Above post is sarcasm)

I never read these news stories as there a dime a dozen lately on every site.

What's the problem? I can't think of a lot of good RPGs where the main character is fixed at all. My whole list pretty much consists of Piranha Bytes games. Other than that, it's usually possible to pick the gender.

Edit: Oh, and Planescape, completely forgot that one. That's also a bit odd to be honest, as it wouldn't be difficult to have a female TNO. Only the ghost girlfriend part would need a re-write I think, though it has been a while since I last played it.

-- “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

A few years ago I actually saw someone (a younger man) during German Carnival being dressed like Green Tentacle !

-- “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

Originally Posted by aries100
I expected to see the Hawke, femHawke, there as well. And yes, while a lot of rpgs let people pick their gender, they always seem to have women herores in scantily clothes. Not so in Biowares rpgs…

I think Hawke deserves recognition, regardless of gender - as one of the most useless/pointless protagonist.

FemShep in particular was done well in terms of voice acting but that's it! On the other hand, Cate Archer was really brilliant (in my opinion )

I only know those 2 from the list. Shows how much games I've played =\

the thing that sets female shepard appart from other games is there's a huge amount of dialogue in the game and it is all voiced. there's not to many rpgs i can think of that have even close to that. besides i could never stand the voice for male shepard and have yet to complete a playthrough on any of the 3 games.

although Jemy mentioned it any list without the longest journey/dreamfall protagonists is a crap list.

Darcy from urban chaos was a great character in a game that predated grand theft auto 3 and wasn't to popular because you played a cop, and a black female one at that.

there's a lot more female characters with substance most of which are absent from this discussion and my memory at the moment…

-- ---when we figure out how to build guillotines for corporations the new revolution will have begun---